Social Working
by Fiercest
Summary: At least once every week of every month of every year he apparates into the lobby of St-Mungo's Hospital and walks up 3 flights of stairs to visit his parents.


Social Working

'_Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents.'_

- Carl Gustav Jun

This is Neville's reality:

At least once every week of every month of every year he apparates into the lobby of St-Mungo's Hospital. He walks up 3 flights of stairs instead of the lift in case he changes his mind about visiting. He passes the floor station and makes his way to the 6th door on the right. Inside he finds the husks of human beings. He finds the bodies his parents once inhabited. He finds two of St-Mungo's most long-standing patients.

Magical folk are not equipped to fix a person's mind and that is what has been ailing Frank and Alice Longbottom for close to 20 years.

He sits down and accepts the chewing gum wrapper that his mother hands him upon every visit.

Sometimes, very rarely, sometimes not for years at a time, one of his parents will have an almost lucid moment. "These are my favorites." Alice had said once when he was very young. And from then on he'd never thrown a single one she'd given him out. "Dumbledore," said Frank once when the man had visited. Perhaps it had been reflexive, subconscious recognition; perhaps this person was merely irreparably etched into their minds (once, staring at the picture of the dark mark in the paper in Neville's hands the summer of 4th year Frank had said You-know-Who's name too), either way there was no recognition in their eyes and neither of the Longbottom parents had ever recognized _him._

Neville's reality is that he is an orphan whose parents' graves are their own bodies.

All the answers to every question he has ever wanted to ask them is lost along with their minds and goes unanswered.

This is what Neville chooses to do about it:

A long time ago an idea had been planted in his brain and had rooted itself there deeply. It is years before it grows into actions but when it does it changes nothing. At least not at first.

At Hogwarts he'd taken muggle studies. He'd found it fascinating and it wasn't altogether too difficult, especially with Harry and Hermione often on hand to answer most of his questions. They'd learned about these people called 'doctors' who were like muggle healers.

Professor Burbage had explained that there were all sorts of types of muggle doctors. Some made potions, some gave them the potions and figured out what was wrong with them, some cut people open to fix them (he wasn't sure how that worked, muggles sure had some barbaric ways of doing things!). Some 'doctors' fixed bodies, some fixed minds, and others had nothing to do with healing at all but were still called doctors for some reason.

He was fascinated by the idea that some muggles could fix people's heads. He asked Hermione about it once, she said her cousin was studying to be one and that they sat there and listened to people talk about their problems and _that_ fixed them.

Neville hung on his parents' every single word, when there were any to listen to, but that never helped them much at all.

In a post-Voldemort world with nothing for him on the horizon but a plan to get a drink at the pub with some friends Neville decided something years after that lecture.

He was going to go to university.

It is a simple matter- conjuring an identity. He makes up a man of 19 with reasonably good report cards and a past that is not entirely fabricated, but just enough for a muggle Neville to be born.

For four years he gives up magic. During his two years of clinical training he takes his wand out of the false bottom of the drawer on his nightstand for only essential things.

It is six years before he sees any of his friends again. They've moved on; some have kids, they all have jobs. And Neville is still 19 and looking for ways to make his parents better.

For a while he does nothing but eat sleep, see patients and see his parents. Everyone in his life is a case study, a way to further his research into mending veterans broken minds.

He begins every session with Alice and Frank Longbottom by licking the tip of a self-scrawling quill, smiling pleasantly at the couple and saying "Good morning, my name's Neville and I'm your son." That he has to introduce himself is a reality he has lived with all his life.

One day he visits his parents for a session, only to find his grandmother already there. Augusta Longbottom stopped visiting her son and daughter-in-law a long time ago, when he was old enough to be trusted to go by himself, but here she is, book in lap, sitting between his parents' beds.

They're both sitting up, knees facing inwards towards his gran. They are staring rapturously at the book with uncomprehending expressions. Alice is running her fingers over the seam and her wrinkled mouth is pursed as if concentrating.

Alice Longbottom had concentrated on nothing in 25 years.

He approaches gran and looks down at the book, which he now knows as an album. This is an album that has sat on the coffee table in his grandmother's house for as long as he can remember. It countains his baby pictures and every photo he's ever seen of his parents _before._

Here they are looking, not recognizing but _concentrating_.

It's not much, but it's progress.


End file.
